


A Catalogue of Non-Definitive Acts

by thehollowones



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies), Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canonical Child Abuse, Credence Barebone Gets a Hug, Credence Barebone Learning Magic, Credence Barebone Lives, Families of Choice, Hospitals, M/M, hope and healing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-01
Updated: 2017-01-15
Packaged: 2018-09-13 21:19:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9142711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thehollowones/pseuds/thehollowones
Summary: They give him all they have, but healing is up to him.In which Credence finds, and loses, many things.





	1. The Thing that was Credence

The thing that was Credence is very small. Much smaller than a mouse. As small, perhaps, as a grain of uncooked rice. Yet it is still visible. There is nothing it can do to make itself invisible. _Stare at the pavement, keep your elbows in._

The thing that was Credence stays in cracks and corners. Only when night falls is it safe to leave. It drifts upwards, floats above the people, searching. Sometimes it’s attention is caught by something, salt and pepper hair or a way of walking that splinters the crowds. It is almost excited, almost purposeful; its tarry body coalescing, gaining in size. Then the quarry rolls their shoulders or turns their head and it is not Him.

The thing that was Credence has searched. When it reaches out into the darkness, it feels nothing.

Not quite nothing. A thread that is not a thread but a pair of kind eyes and warm hands tugs at it. The thing that was Credence is not sure how it is tugged, as it is currently incorporeal. The feeling is akin to a word felt on the tip of a tongue, an imprint behind an eyelid of what was once a meaningful shape. It is tethered. It does not like being tethered.

The thing that was Credence follows the pull. It is led through the city streets, speckled with home time stragglers. It casts tiny shadows as it flits past the street lamps. The pull leads him to a second floor of a building. It smashes a round hole in the window glass. The tug has become insistent, almost unbearable. There are no shards to litter the ground. It has pulverized the glass into a fine powder.

There is no one inside the darkened kitchen. It is ordinary. Quiet. Safe.

A weight begins to lift. It was pulled here, it came, it is safe. It looks around. Realizes it is looking with eyes, realizes that those eyes belong to Credence, who is now present and accounted for and God, does it hurt. Having a body hurts. He glances down. All of him is there, save his hands, which are smoky and insubstantial still.

The door swings open. Light spreads from a fixture on the ceiling, filling the room. Two women are standing in the doorway. One of them is Tina, with the kind eyes and warm hands and power that can fill a room. She is smiling. Credence watches the smile melt from her face. His smoking hands are held in plain sight.

“Don’t be scared. Please don’t be scared.” Strange. He had meant to tell her to run. The thing that was in Credence meant she had to run.

Her eyes are filling. Credence takes a step backwards, trips over himself, and lands on his backside.

He cannot look at Tina. Instead, he looks to the other woman, and she is the most beautiful person he has ever seen. She is so far removed from the drudgery and grind of church life, the grime of the alleys. She toes her heels off slowly. It looks strange because they are the same color as her skin. It looks as though she is removing a part of herself.

She takes a step towards him. Credence panics, feels his face split open.

He begins to cry tearless, jagged sobs, the stumps of his wrists pressed to each side of his head. He doesn’t want to hurt the beautiful woman. He doesn’t want to hurt Tina.

The beautiful woman is kneeling before him. She puts a hand on each of his wrists, helping to hold his skull together, preventing the thing that is in Credence from seeping out. She is a lovely, golden blur in his vision.

“You’re not going to hurt us, Credence.” He hears her smiling. He has never heard a smile before. “You’re okay, sweetie. You’re okay.”

“I’m not scared.” Here is Tina, his safety. His first inkling that there was something beyond the constricts of sin. Her hand on his shoulder is steady.

“Come back to us,” says the beautiful woman. He is shaking, face covered in tears and leaking evil. He could kill them all.

He feels his hands gripping his hair.


	2. Like Dreaming Of Angels

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Queenie's purse is better than Newt's suitcase.

Tina stands up once Credence has stopped shaking.

“I’ll make up the sofa,” she says, smile tilting to one side. Queenie - the beautiful woman, Tina’s sister - seems content to stay on the floor, her legs folded neatly beneath her.

They are letting him stay. They are, in fact, insisting that he stay with them. Even though he is a monster. Even though he is a killer, and dangerous, and has something ugly and twisted and broken inside him. Even though he is ugly and twisted and broken.

“You’re breaking my heart.” Queenie’s delicate eyebrows are all bunched up above her nose. “There’s nothing ugly in you, sweetie. Just some angry magic, that’s all.”

Credence stares up at her, forgetting his rule about eye contact. He has years of practice in not speaking his mind; he knows he has said nothing out loud. How had she known? Horrible certainty pools in his stomach. She can read-

“-minds. Yes. Sort of.”

His brain whites out with dread. She can read his mind, can see all the horrible things, all his sins and unworthy thoughts. Can see Him. He thinks of the punishment Ma would have delivered for the things he thought about Him, did with Him, and it’s like she’s alive all over again, hurting him and hurting him and hurting him.

Queenie clutches his knee and he is brought back down, the crack he felt forming within him papered over. Credence looks at her. Queenie’s eyes are wide and hurting, framed by dramatically long lashes. She has scooted even closer to him. He looks at her, so improbably beautiful, and sees a flash of himself.

“Are people afraid of you, too?” he thinks as loudly as he can. Her laugh is liquid and her chin wobbles, but she is smiling at him. He has made Queenie smile.

“All the time,” she says. Then, “do you like cocoa?”

-

“Shit. Shitting shit.”

Tina is writing a report at the kitchen table. Credence doesn’t know what it’s about or who it’s for, but Tina keeps throwing down her feathered writing implement and cursing, so he figures it must be important.

He is sitting on his makeshift sofa bed, hands clutched in the sheets a little tighter with every curse, though he knows it’s not directed at him. He doesn’t know what to do with himself. He was rarely at loose ends at the church. Idle hands are the devil’s plaything, and all. What spare time he did have was spent curled up somewhere, dreaming of being anyone else.

“Damn it!”

“Use a pen, Tinie,” Queenie calls from her chair. “No one will notice.”

Tina’s grumbling is just noise to Credence, but whatever Queenie hears seems to amuse her. She stretches her arms above her head, letting her book fall to the floor.

“Never any good with a quill,” she says, conspiratorially. “Do you wanna see some magic, sweetie?”

Credence is eager for the distraction, so Queenie crosses the room and picks up the purse dangling from the coat rack. It is large, easily as large as a briefcase, and lavender in color. It is most definitely Queenie’s. She sets it on the floor and climbs inside, disappearing from view.

Credence is impressed with this, though he doesn’t exactly see the point. Maybe it was for hiding in, if something bad happened? Queenie’s arm pops back out and waves at him.

“Come on in!”

He climbs down some steps and emerges into a white room that stretches to an imperceptible horizon. He wants to go back up, lift the purse and hold it, because surely all this couldn’t be inside it?

He can see Queenie’s figure through gauzy curtains that billow aimlessly to and fro. He pushes through them to get to her. She is smiling with her whole body, bouncing up on the balls of her feet. She grabs his hand and brushes aside the last of the curtains.

Credence sees a large window seat framed by bookcases. The window is showing an impossibly starry sky. All of the room he has seen so far is suffused with a soft light, emanating from nowhere in particular.

“It’s beautiful,” he says. He lets go of Queenie and goes to run his finger across the spines of the books. He had never been allowed a book other than the Bible, not even hymnals. One finds its way into his hands almost of it’s own volition and he cradles it, looking to Queenie for permission. She nods.

NOT NOW NOT YET THIS’LL KILL TANYA. LET IT BE ME INSTEAD. (A bed, an old man, a horrible human rattling). We need potatoes. OH, GOD, WHY IS THIS HAPPENING TO US?

“Sometimes, I can’t help hearing. People are loud when they’re hurting. Tinie made this for me back at school so I’d have somewhere to put it all.”

Credence feels a rush of envy, but clamps down on it quickly. Queenie is good and deserving, but he is not, and he doesn't want her to know how unworthy he is of this secret.

“It could be your secret, too,” Queenie says. He looks up, stunned to see that she is serious, maybe even nervous to be holding this offering. Her hands are all twisted together. “You could come down here when your overwhelmed. Can you write?”

Credence nods.

“You could use the books. If you wanna.”

Last summer on a night when both the sky and Credence’s hands were streaked with red, Modesty had crept into his room on anxious feet. She opened her hands and offered him a tiny strawberry, too small for most to bother with but so precious, when he had had nothing since breakfast. Credence envisions the berry, closes his eyes to concentrate on the warm feeling that had filled him at the sight. He pushes it to the top of his mind, makes it as clear as he can, and trusts Queenie to know what he means.

“You’re welcome.” The smile is back in Queenie’s voice.

Later, he will write MR. GRAVES in one of Queenie’s books, the letters tiny to the point of illegibility. He will fall asleep with the hard edge of it under his cheek.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you liked it!  
> How does one write a sex scene? Asking for a friend


	3. A Warm Heart, A Beautiful Brain

“Credence, your hands.” Queenie sounds so relaxed that it takes him a moment to register her meaning. The hand clutched around his fork is trembling. Both hands are blurry and greying, like something drowned.

Queenie’s foot nudges him under the table in a friendly manner. He focuses on the touch and on his breathing.

When his hands are substantial again, Credence chances a glance upwards. Queenie is lounging in her pink robe, face placid. Tina is frozen half-off her chair, ready to contain the situation. She is in her work clothes. They make her seem a different person; someone closed off and dogged and potentially deadly. Neither of them look afraid. Credence feels a hot flush of shame anyways.

“Anything you wanna ask us, sweetie?” Of course, Queenie already knows.

“Is Mr. Graves alive?”

Queenie and Tina look at each other. Credence’s heart flutters in his chest. The trouble is, he doesn’t know the limits of their kindness like he did with Ma. He had lain awake all these nights trying to calculate how many questions, how many impositions he was allowed. When was the rug to be swept out from under him, sending him spiraling back into his own emptiness?

“Do you remember,” Tina says slowly, “what happened down in the subway? That man was not Mr. Graves. He was an evil man named Grindlewald wearing Mr. Graves’ face.”

To block out the pain fear rage of that night, Credence thinks about what his Ma would say if she knew witches could wear other peoples’ faces.

“The short of it is, we don’t know where the real Mr. Graves is, or if he’s alive. We’ve all been looking, but…” Tina’s mouth tugs downwards in a bitter expression.

Queenie nudges him under the table again, this time encouragingly. Having asked one question, it is far less frightening to ask another.

“How long was Grindell- Grindlewall pretending to be Mr. Graves?”

“We’ve no idea.”

Which means-

“You may not have known Mr. Graves at all,” says Queenie, very gently.

-

Tina hovers around until it is time for her to leave for work. She does so with an air of reluctance, squeezing Credence’s shoulder on her way out. Rather than let him brood, Queenie insists that Credence accompany her to the stores. Sneaking down the stairs to avoid the landlady is an enjoyable distraction, as is watching Queenie navigate the streets. She wanders through crowds and stops in the middle of congested sidewalks with perfect equanimity. Everybody makes way for Queenie, and Credence is treated to a walk through New York City without being jostled.

The air is sharp with snow and bitterly cold. Credence is unable to pull his jacket tighter around himself, as he is clutching paper bags full of groceries. An evil person, wearing Mr. Graves’ face. What did that make Credence, who adored him unto the end, who saw him as a miracle just for him in a city of the damned?

He almost knocks into Queenie, who has stopped to look at a window display. A grey men’s overcoat is draped over a mannequin. It is knee length wool with wide lapels. Queenie looked thoughtfully at it, and then at Credence, who feels a spark of hope that quickly gives way to dread.

“What do you think? You like it?” Queenie is grinning, but her smile fades as Credence takes a few steps back in alarm.

“N. Y-yes. I mean, I don’t have any- I don't deserve-“ Queenie’s mouth is slightly agape as she takes in his fumbling words and, likely, the panic in his thoughts. Credence has a sudden, horrible feeling that she had not meant what he thought she had meant. She would laugh at him, or worse, get angry.

Queenie’s face takes on a determination that could rival her sister’s. She steps forward, people flowingly harmlessly around her, and puts a hand on each of Credence’s shoulders.

“Do something for me, sweetie. Say you’re good and deserving and brave. Out loud.”

Credence searches her face for mockery, but she seems to mean it, so he says, “I’m good and deserving and brave.”

“How did that feel?”

Like ashes in his mouth. “Not real. Wrong.”

“I bet it felt wrong the first time someone told you you were undeserving, too. Promise me you'll keep saying it until you believe it, because it’s the truth this time.”

Credence feels a sudden wave of pity for everyone who did not withstand the shock of Queenie Goldstein’s beauty long enough to see the wonder of her.

They buy the coat. It fits him perfectly.

-

Credence watches pasta dough shape itself into little bows and wonders at what his life has become. Queenie is humming, flicking her wand this way and that to control the various ingredients floating in the air. Tina had said not to expect her until late, so it is just the two of them in the gathering darkness.

A spiraling whiteness appears over the kitchen table. A jar of some spice that had been hovering over Queenie’s shoulder falls to the floor and smashes.

The whiteness speaks with Tina’s voice. It says, “we found him.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promise you some original Graves in the next chapter!

**Author's Note:**

> I do not own these characters.  
> Its going to be a bumpy ride, gang. I hope you enjoy it!


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